Hugs. That is what Stephanie Quinn mentions often when reflecting on the UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeon who saved her life.

"My doctor's currency, in addition to her extraordinary skills, are her warm and abundant hugs," Mrs. Quinn said.

Four years ago, Toral Patel, M.D., Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Director of the UT Southwestern Brain Tumor Program, removed a tumor the size of a large egg from Mrs. Quinn's brain.

Dr. Patel has such a winning manner that when Mrs. Quinn's concerned mother finally met her, "she saw in Dr. Patel what I saw from the moment I met her: an amazingly cheerful, truthful, and humanity-filled doctor," Mrs. Quinn said. "She didn't hesitate in saying removing the tumor was the best path forward. And my reaction was quite simply: ‘Let’s not wait, let’s do it.’"

Healing meets courage

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Bedford, Texas, Mrs. Quinn graduated from the University of North Texas and is an accomplished content designer with a history in technical writing and editing.

She first started experiencing seizures in January 2021, leading to severe nausea and an inability to walk or speak. Her vision was reduced to seeing objects in either black-and-white or yellow. At its worst, she had up to 10 seizures a day.

In March 2021, after reviewing her CT scan and MRI, the neurologists at Mrs. Quinn’s initial hospital concluded she had a brain tumor and immediately transferred her to UT Southwestern, where Dr. Patel would treat her grade 2 astrocytoma (a type of glioma).

A 2006 graduate of UT Southwestern Medical School, Dr. Patel recommended that a highly complex brain tumor surgery (craniotomy) be performed – a procedure Dr. Patel has done more than 2,000 times in her 11 years on faculty at UT Southwestern. This particular operation, lasting approximately seven hours, required Mrs. Quinn to be awake during the surgery and spoken to as doctors monitored her speech and motor functions.

“Performing an ‘awake craniotomy’ required waking Mrs. Quinn up and asking her to, among other verbal tasks, recite the alphabet, name objects, complete sentences, and count to 100,” Dr. Patel said. “I also asked her to move various parts of her right side throughout the course of the operation.”

Per Dr. Patel, critical to the success of Mrs. Quinn’s operation was her ability to fully participate in the full spectrum of “awake testing.”

“I absolutely remember being awake during parts of the operation,” Mrs. Quinn recalled. “There was this blue curtain over my head, and I thought it was a brilliant blue sky, and I could see my anesthesiologist’s face.”

Dr. Patel was able to remove more than 95% of Mrs. Quinn’s tumor – which would eventually be identified as an isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutant grade 2 astrocytoma. A small portion of the tumor was not removed, due to its location within critical speech pathways. The IDH mutation is found in a significant portion of low-grade gliomas, particularly in younger adults, and is a favorable prognostic marker. The extent of resection, according to Dr. Patel, “is considered spectacular given the tumor’s location.”

“After Dr. Patel confided in my family how many years I could anticipate living, she then added that she would be with me all the way, never giving up. ‘We are going to grow old together,’ Dr. Patel said to me many times,” Mrs. Quinn recalled.

“Clearly, Stephanie is one of my most successful and tenacious patients,” Dr. Patel said. “If you were to meet her in the hallway today, you’d never know the journey she has been on over the last four years.”

Gifts of appreciation and their impact

Mrs. Quinn and her parents decided to make a gift supporting Dr. Patel’s ongoing research. The first gift creatively came from Mrs. Quinn’s October 2022 wedding to her husband, Patrick Andrews. Their guests, in lieu of traditional wedding gifts, made donations to advance Dr. Patel’s research projects.

The Quinns now intend to have a new endowment established to be known as the Stephanie M. Quinn Fund for NeuroSurgery and Neuro-Oncology Research in Glioma.

“Our support is a direct reflection of the absolute trust that I immediately felt in Dr. Patel from the moment I first met her,” Mrs. Quinn said. “She’s not only brilliant, but I feel she will make some discovery that will change the lives of people in my position while moving closer to a cure.”

According to Dr. Patel, the biggest impact from Mrs. Quinn’s philanthropy has been support to UT Southwestern’s IDH-mutant glioma research group, which is working on therapeutics that specifically target IDH-mutant gliomas – the kind afflicting Mrs. Quinn – with significant potential to meaningfully impact future treatments and tumor monitoring strategies.

“Thanks to the generosity of the Quinn family and others, we are moving the needle for IDH-mutant glioma patients,” Dr. Patel said.

Mrs. Quinn is candid about her gratitude for Dr. Patel and her oncologist, Michael Youssef, M.D., Assistant Professor of Neurology and a neuro-oncology specialist at UT Southwestern. “Clearly, I wouldn’t be alive without them – and that’s the first time I’ve ever publicly admitted something so powerfully emotional,” she said.